Thursday, June 18, 2009

TWD: Parisian Mango Tarts, late, and no ice cream

For June 16, 2009, Jessica of My Baking Heart chose the "Parisian Apple Tarts" for our "Tuesdays with Dorie" assignment. I decided to make them with mangoes instead, as Dorie suggests in the "Playing around" section of the recipe.

I finished these wonderful tartlets just before flying out to Puyallup, Washington, to attend my nephew's high school graduation. So, a late post for last week's recipe and no Honey-Peach Ice Cream for this week.

Some time ago I saw a recipe for a very quick puff pastry made in a food processor. I've been hoping for an excuse to try it, so this recipe fit the bill! It was indeed easy. Prepare dough one evening (very quick), roll and fold, wrap and chill. Cut into pieces and roll out the next evening; chill briefly and trim edges. Third evening, make the tarts!

Mangoes aren't naturally round like apples. In fact they are a really strange shape. So I trimmed my mango halves into nice little half-spheres and chopped up the extra bits fairly fine. I put a small pile of scraps under the quartered half-spheres. They took just about 25 minutes to bake -- maybe a little more. The butter and sugar mostly slid down to the bottom and made a lovely "sauce" around the bottom of the mango pieces.

Wow, this was great! The pastry was wonderfully flaky and buttery, the fruit was sweet / tart. Easy and fabulous!

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Quickest Puff Pastry, by Nick MalgieriFrom his recipe for Sausage Rolls, currently the recipe of the month on his site (but it will probably move after a while). Here's the link: http://www.nickmalgieri.com/recipes.htmlThis is 2/3 of his recipe.

1. Combine the water and salt in a measuring cup or small bowl and stir well to dissolve the salt completely. Set aside.2. Place the flour in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Add a fourth of the butter (1/3 cup) and pulse repeatedly to mix in finely. Add the remaining butter and pulse just until it is distributed in the flour mixture, 2 to 3 times.3. Add the salted water and pulse 2 to 3 times again. The dough will not form a ball.4. Invert the dough to a floured work surface and carefully remove the blade. Lightly flour the dough and form it into a rough rectangle.5. Gently roll the dough, making sure there is always enough flour between the work surface and the dough to prevent it from sticking, until it is a rectangle about 12 x 20 inches.6. Fold the top long edge over the middle section, and then fold the bottom edge over that to make three equal layers, giving a 4x20 rectangle. Roll the dough up like a jelly roll from one of the short edges. Use the palm of your hand to flatten the rolled dough into a rectangular shape, about 5 x 6 inches, and about 1 inch thick. (Note: at this point, I rolled the dough out a bit more, and gave it another "business letter" fold.)7. Refrigerate the dough in plastic wrap until it is firm, at least 2 hours.8. Roll the dough out to a rectangle 12x18 inches.

Storage: You may keep the dough in the refrigerator for up to 2 days before using it. If you are preparing the dough longer in advance, double-wrap and freeze it. Defrost the dough in the refrigerator overnight before using.

Note: I ended up with 686 grams / 24.2 ounces of dough. I divided the dough into three equal pieces. The pieces were long and narrow, so I folded them in half again to form a square. I rolled each one out to slightly more than 8x8 inches, then trimmed to exactly 8x8 inches. Two of the pieces are now in my freezer. The other one was cut into 4 squares, and each square was trimmed to an octagon. The scraps are also in the freezer.

About Me

My husband and I moved to our bungalow in 2001 so as to have more room to enjoy the things we love -- gardening, cooking, cats... Home repair is not on that list but we end up having to do it anyway. My personal hobbies include knitting, embroidery, and reading fantasy and science fiction.